What is SPEP?

For the benefit of those confused by the occasional references to this organization: SPEP stands for the "Society for Phenomenology & Existential Philosophy." It is a professional organization that primarily represents about a dozen philosophy PhD programs and their graduates: Stony Brook, Penn State, Duquesne, Emory, Vanderbilt, New School, Boston College, DePaul, Villanova, Memphis, Oregon, maybe one or two others. Many faculty from literature departments also participate in SPEP. Most of the leading Anglophone scholars of the post-Kantian Continental traditions have nothing to do with SPEP, so it's important not to be misled by the false claim that SPEPPies make that their organization represents Continental philosophy in the US: it does not. ("Party-line Continentals" is closer to the mark.) Some very distinguished scholars took their PhDs at SPEP programs, philosophers like Charles Griswold at Boston University, Terry Pinkard at Georgetown University, and Dalia Nassar at the University of Sydney. These scholars are the exception, not the norm, as I noted in connection with the SPEPPie "Pluralist [sic] Guide" (see also this). Some SPEP members participate as PGR evaluators, and most SPEP departments have been evaluated in the PGR at one time or another--they tend to get very low marks overall (outside the top 50), due to their narrowness and idiosyncrasies, but they sometimes rank decently in specialty areas. Students who find the work done by faculty at SPEP departments appealing will be better-served by the Pluralist [sic] Guide than the PGR, but they will also get, on average, an inferior philosophical education.

About 15 years ago, SPEP created an "Advocacy Committee," whose explicit purpose was to try to counteract and undermine the PGR (if you search back through committee minutes included in the annual SPEP programs, this becomes quite clear). You can see the current and past membership of the SPEP "Advocacy Committee" here.